Fixit: Don't burn treated woods in yard: Results are toxic

Q Is it legal to burn old landscape logs and utility poles?

A No, not if you burn them yourself.

Utility poles, like treated plywood, railroad ties and many landscape logs, are treated either with creosote or chlorinated chemical compounds. Burning treated wood creates cancer-causing dioxins and other toxic gases. To keep from exposing yourself, your family and neighbors to these toxins, treated woods should be taken to an approved incinerator, which uses extremely high temperatures, for disposal.

Sometimes waste wood is burned in an outdoor wood boiler (used as a heat source for a home). That practice causes even higher amounts of pollution than a modern wood stove because of the lower temperatures and the smoldering cycle once boilers reach operating temperature.

Remember that the back-yard burning of garbage, a surprisingly common practice in rural Minnesota, is also against the law in most cases. The single largest source of cancer-causing dioxin in the United States is now back-yard garbage burning, which accounts for more than all other known sources combined. Dioxin is a potent toxin that builds up in our food chain and has a serious impact on the health of humans and animals

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is recommending that the Legislature act to ban all back-yard garbage burning.

Mark Sulzbach and Mark Rust, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency